


the slow fade of love

by porcelain



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Gen, Hurt Stiles, M/M, Mama Stilinski - Freeform, aka the gross fic of feels, hurt/loss/comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-31
Updated: 2012-07-31
Packaged: 2017-11-11 02:52:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,025
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/473691
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/porcelain/pseuds/porcelain
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Grief is a curious thing, an all too consuming cloud that makes you assume that you’re the only one in the world that’s hurting. In reality, though, it seems that in the end people will always share the universal feeling of loss, and maybe that’s a quiet comfort in its own way.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the slow fade of love

He misses her smile the most.

There are other things too—of course there are, of course, and Stiles remembers them, sometimes. A scar on her wrist that she never explained, a faint white curve blending into ivory skin. One front tooth chipped from ice skating on a winter-whipped afternoon when she was fourteen and daring. Rouge lip stain and iced coffee mixing  into one after a kiss on his cheek.

Over time, he acknowledges the fade, the dimming of her laughter and the low dip of white into black mixed into a firm nothingness. He doesn’t always reminisce clearly, and he feels sorry for that, sorry for not being able to picturing her in her entirety. He feels sorry for forgetting.

Sometimes, though, it’s too humid, and there’s a shift in the wind—the crescent moon has come out, and there’s a moment where he can catch the fleeting things: chest falling, breath slowing, fingers splayed. He can’t fall asleep. There’s a silence, and he remembers.

(She was all laugh lines, crinkly eyes, with little white stars sleeping in her jaw: nothing was brighter. Nothing will ever be.)   
  
He misses her smile the most. 

+

His father keeps an old shoebox in the back of the living room closet, tucked away behind new rain coats.

It’s forgotten for years, dusting away in a corner before Stiles digs in to look for those red Converse sneakers that he had misplaced.  Most of what’s in there are soft photo albums, yellowing over time. The creased pages are filled with outdated photographs, a little glossy and self developed with tiny, cursive writing on the back like _Mama Bearlinksi! 1998._

Stiles is on his knees in the poorly lit corridor when he tries to memorize all of them, the little notes and observations dancing in his mind like a prayer, or maybe a sadly sung hymn. He doesn’t realize he’s crying until his father pulls him in, _it’s okay, son_ a repeating litany that he barely acknowledges. He wants to push him away, to brush away the burn of the tears from his eyes, but he can barely feel his legs. 

“I’m sorry,” is all he says, shaking, over and over. “I’m sorry.”  

+

They’re drowsy, a bit drunk— _very_ drunk, in Stiles’ case, mouth bitter with alcohol when he and Scott decide to sprawl out on top of the hood of his Jeep to watch the stars. Stiles likes to joke that in most of California, stargazing is a joke; the smoke from all the factories nearby ruining any chance of being able to catch a pretty twinkle in the night sky.

So it’s a good thing, he thinks, that in Beacon Hills there’s an open sky and a wide, free valley. Away from the pollution of city smog, the stars are visible and achingly bright against the blanket of black.

Everything tastes a bit like ash when Stiles breaks the silence with, “How do you—how do you fucking do it, Scott?”

Scott stretches his legs out, wiggling his toes. He’s lying spread eagle as if he’s trying to embrace the entirety of the sky, or something, when he replies with a low giggle. “Do _what_ , dude?”

Stiles looks over at his best friend with exasperation, his mind reeling with anger just by looking at Scott—he’s always been so, so. So full of carelessness—or maybe, carefreeness. It’s not fair, though, his anger, and Stiles knows it, knows it all too well. It’s not Scott’s fault that his dad _chose_ to leave his family—and it’s not Stiles’ fault, either, that his mom didn’t. He’s quiet, for a while. 

Bringing the slim bottle of Vodka up to his mouth, he takes a sip, or two, or three, before replying: “Nothing, man. It’s all just, stupid, anyways. Let’s get you home before you vomit all over my car. Again.”

On the drive back, Scott falls asleep, head drooped but pressed against the window, and Stiles turns up the radio to drown out the puppy-like snoring. There are no sounds on the streets, just the whirring of the engine and the low mourning of _we stay because we don’t know where else to go_ coming from his speakers. 

In the dead of the night, when Stiles is all alone in his car, he dreams of his childhood—a blanket of white, white, white snow, wrapping him numb.

He dreams that no one comes to save him.

+

(The hospital is clean, too clean, filled with sharp needles and sterilization. Stiles has always hated hospitals. He’s always hated old people, too: they kind of reeked of death, and ginger, and a lingering sense of hope that makes it too sad to be around them.

“How are you?” his father’s voice shakes with tears that he’s too afraid to shed. Somewhere in the room, the monitor beeps out heartbeats, very slowly, and Stiles cracks open the door slightly.

 _Not too bad_ , she hums in reply, sweet and easy, and Stiles swears he can hear her smile. _Doctor says I should get more rest._

“You’re getting plenty of that,” and that’s when she laughs, full of ache.

 _She’s getting weaker,_ he remembers the doctor telling his dad gently, _there’s not much we can do at this point. I’m so sorry._

The laughter fades into soft murmurs, and he presses against the door just a little more, nudging it open. The lights are dimmed. _Really, I love you so much,_ his father says. He leans over the tubes and bandages, and lowers his head, kissing her as fiercely as he dares. She’s crying when the beeping jumps faster, mouthing something against his lips that Stiles can’t quite catch.

It's only one week later when she dies. His father is silently peeling old visitor stickers off of his shirt while Stiles stands against the doorframe, the house so hushed when he suddenly thinks of something. Promise, he realizes.

She was saying _promise me.)_

+

His mother used to write about love. Not the romantic kind—though that did make its way onto the little scraps of paper scattered around the house—but all kinds, even the ones that were long forgotten.

“Why is every song about love?” he remembers asking her once when he was seven, sitting at the kitchen table. It was raining outside. “Why can’t we just hear songs about, like, tissues or socks or something, mom?”

The radio was on in the background while she made apple pie, the smell of warm happiness wafting through the air. She set down her paisley patterned mitts on the counter, and pressed a kiss against his forehead. “Love is universal,” she told him. “Everyone is in love with love.”

“Not me!” Stiles had exclaimed, his small arms flailing about. “I think love is gross, blegh.”

His mother poured cold milk into a glass cup as the corner of her lips curled up. “Well I’m guessing you won’t be any having any of this pie, then.” She brought the drink to her mouth, watching him with her eyebrows raised playfully. She didn’t continue, though, waiting for Stiles to prompt her further.

Without missing a beat, he had widened his eyes and said, “Why not?”

The smile ghosting on her face broadened when the oven went _ping,_ and she went to pull out the hot pastry. “Love,” she had said peculiarly, setting the pie down on the table with care. “It’s because I cook these with love.”

Stiles regarded her sternly for a moment, before replying, “Your love is making me faaaat.”

She merely beamed at him.

Later, when he came down into the kitchen to sneak his third slice of pie and a glass of milk, he found a note pinned to fridge. It had only said:

_here is a secret - love is what makes you grow (not milk)_

+

Panic attacks, Stiles thinks, are kind of like—as if all of a sudden, someone placed you in the air, and you’re sky diving, and then you realize that there is no parachute.

It’s a Monday morning when he gets dizzy, drops onto his knees, and face plants into his bedroom carpet; his dad isn’t home to acknowledge the pain he’s in, so obviously, the best thing he can do is take a few breaths, get up, and crawl back into bed. He’s clutching his backpack to his chest all the while, asking himself questions like how many years have passed, how much the pain has subsided. Stiles doesn’t have answers to any of them.

His dreams and memories are the same: the smell of his mother’s perfume, pasta casserole, a brand new gold locket still unopened in a velvet box in his father’s room. See, mornings used to mean blueberry pancakes; now they mean cold sweat and nausea, flashbacks to heart monitors.

Stiles finds that the deeper he shoves these things down, the farther back his memories go.

He decides to take the rest of the day off from school. One day turns into another, and then another, and another, and his father notices, of course. Stiles doesn’t mean to worry him, he really doesn’t, and he knows he’s getting off easy here, with his dad never being home long enough to scold him properly or drag him off somewhere for more than a few minutes.

Secretly, the only reason his dad doesn’t bother him out of bed more than he really should is because he knows why Stiles is motionless in the first place. He’s learned, over time, to let his son mourn on these same few days during every year.

Five days go by, and Stiles doesn’t get any sleep.  He ignores almost every one of Scott’s phone calls. He picks up on the eleventh one, waiting just until the last ring. He doesn’t say anything, letting Scott do the babbling for once.

“Hey, man, uh—you’ve been out of school the entire week, are you okay? I mean, I saw your dad earlier and he said you’re fine and just sick, but. I mean. You haven’t texted me back or anything, and I just wanted to say I’m sorry I’ve been busy, you know, hanging with Allison, actually I’m going to meet her in a few hours but—Stiles—“

There’s a saying that sadness makes you older, weary; truthfully, Stiles feels younger than ever. And he’s tired: tired of angry werewolf would-be packs and of freakish lizard things, tired of lonesomeness, tired of caring for others so much that it _hurts_ when he gets so little in return. Tired of knowing his father gets drunk sometimes and talks to the open emptiness of the living room—just an echo of _I miss you honey, I miss you._

Stiles traces lines on his thigh aimlessly as he breathes into his phone, thinking for a beat of what he should say. He hangs up. He doesn’t feel sorry.

+

Well, eventually, he starts to feel bad. Scott’s a little bit dumb, but that doesn’t mean he’s a bad friend.

 _i’m fine_ , Stiles texts back. _i just need to be alone rn but im coming back to school on monday_

After he hits send, he lets out an exhale of relief, but then he thinks of one other thing.

_PS it turns out using 2 condoms at the same time does not guarantee protection DON’T DO IT ANYMORE MAN_

+

Mustering up the courage to pull on clean clothes and leave the house on Sunday is probably the toughest thing he’s had to do for a while, now, and that is reasonably tough when you consider all the shit Stiles has been through in just the past few months due to his best friend being turned into a monster puppy.

He finds himself walking, not driving, to the small cemetery practically hidden behind the lake nearby the local park. It’s a little far out, closed off from the rest of town, but maybe he’s a little bit thankful for that. The dim streetlights flicker, shining on him faintly, and he’s clutching the homemade bouquet of pink dahlias in his hand, not aware that the tightness of his grip is slowly crushing the stems.

He doesn’t want to be here—he _hasn’t_ been here, for a very long time. 

When he thinks about it, really thinks about it, he should feel bad. And he does, the pain just accumulating onto his mental checklist, weighing down, adding to the ache in his chest that just builds and builds.

His steps are slow, the heavy _thump_ of his soles creating a harsh sound in the deafening silence, row upon row of once white tombstones now gray in the moonlight. Most of them stand crooked, leaning upon each other as if still waiting for someone who never came. Stiles digs through his memories, trying to trace his steps back to a place he thought he had forgotten. When he gets there, he goes still.

_Beloved mother, wife, and friend._

Stiles shifts in his spot, reading the one line over and over again, waiting for his eyes to brim up with tears. They don’t.

He can practically hear her now: _sweetheart, you came so late, didn’t I teach you anything? I stopped waiting for you, honey._

And Stiles, he just nods, chewing on his bottom lip, trying to muster up the courage to do something, do anything. Apologies seem so repetitive, and at this point that the only other things that come to mind don’t really say much either—I miss you, I wish you were here. There needs to be a different word invented in a new language, Stiles decides, to describe all of his grief. The English language cannot possibly be sufficient enough to encompass all of the things that he feels jostling around painfully in his chest.

He lays down the flowers, already wilting, onto the dewy grass and is motionless for a while. Little droplets rain down from the grey sky, and he kneels down, a damp spot forming in the knees of his jeans.

“Hey,” he murmurs. “At least I brought flowers this time, right?”

There’s not enough gusto to his voice to make that sound like the joke he intended, and it’s too bad really because humor is his armor and sarcasm his sword, but truth be told, sometimes he’s just sick of pretending.

He drops on his ass and props himself by the tombstone, and closes his eyes. The rain keeps pouring.

+

When he wakes up, Stiles doesn’t expect to be cold and wet. It only is a matter of seconds before he realizes that the sky is still overcast and—well, that says it all. The sky, not his bedroom ceiling.

His shoulders brush away from hard marble stone, and he curses at the numbness of his entire lower body, swears that this is the last time he skips over sleep for an entire week. Taking naps in cemeteries is not exactly the kind of thing he wants to make a habit out of. Groaning, he tries to push himself off the ground and fails. He doesn’t expect to hear, “So this is what you like to do in your spare time.”

He doesn’t expect Derek Hale.

“You have _got_ to stop doing that,” Stiles wrinkles his nose. “It’s kind of more than creepy.”

Derek just blinks once and skillfully raises one brow. “I’m not the one getting my beauty sleep in cemeteries.”

Stiles takes a breath and prepares to say something snarky in his own defense, but finds that he feels _sore_ , all over his body, and on the inside too. So he closes his mouth, swallows, and casts his gaze sideways briefly. He doesn’t see Derek flicking his eyes beside him, a shadow of empathy on his face. When Derek reaches out with a hand to help him up, he takes it.

For a moment, Stiles wonders what Derek is even doing here. Then he realizes – with an unspoken _oh_ – he doesn’t have to ask to understand why.

Grief is a curious thing, an all too consuming cloud that makes you assume that you’re the only one in the world that’s hurting. In reality, though, it seems that in the end people will always share the universal feeling of loss, and maybe that’s a quiet comfort in its own way.

“Thanks,” Stiles tells him.  

There’s a pause in which they both say nothing, the silence too deafening, and Stiles feels like running on home. He doesn’t get the chance to, though, because then Derek comes closer, says in a low, rumbling voice, “Tell me something about her.”

 _No,_ he thinks vaguely. _There’s too much._ The expression on Derek’s face, though, soft and knowing, is hard to ignore, and he can feel himself sinking deeper, into opening up his wounds for him.

“Her favorite season was spring,” he begins, steady and clear. “She planted dahlias in our backyard every year, and they were, you know, her favorite—I brought them to the hospital a lot.” He gives the older man a glance. “She used to get a little sad when summer would come.”

Derek doesn’t respond, and Stiles continues. “Maybe she was happy. To die in the spring, I mean.” He clears his throat, and Derek looks at him. Looks at him like he’s the only thing that matters.

He _knows._

Stiles will never know what it’s like to lose everything completely, but when Derek leans in close, a silent pillar of warmth surrounding him, he thinks he comprehends it a little, just the smallest bits and pieces.

+

One night, in the dark of the Hale house, Stiles reaches an arm around Derek, fingers curling around the back of his neck, and whispers to him, _it’s not so bad_.

_Yeah?_

_We weren’t meant to be okay._

He presses his face into Derek’s bare chest so fiercely that all he can smell is pinecone and Derek tilts his head down to see him more clearly, half-smiling, small and crooked and tentative.

 _I used to keep a tally of the dead._ Stiles looks up at him, one eye closed. _But these days, I’ve been counting the living._


End file.
